Self-study
hi friends wondering if anyone has any tips or advice on closing the gap between your score and blind review? feels like when i have unlimited time, i'm able to find my way to the correct answer but hoping for advice to help me perform as well during the real thing!
thank you in advance ☺
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8 comments
Here's a general video I made on this subject. Happy to give more nuanced advice if you've got any follow-up questions.
@MichaelWright
hi Michael, this video was so amazing !!!! it was eye-opening to hear you draw the distinction between the different targeted ways to improve on content and execution skills and it has definitely changed the way I view my BR score. the tangible suggestions are also something i will definitely include in my prep!
thank you for taking the time to respond!
Hey there! I would examine your reasoning/strategy for different question types. When you see a (for example) weaken question, what are the next steps you're going to take? What are you looking for? Do you pre-phrase, etc? The more you get to know your thought process and recognize patterns (both in your thinking and in the test itself), the more quickly you're able to move through the questions. Having a game plan is a huge asset in testing with efficiency.
I hope that helps, and happy studying! Also, sick BR score :)
@PhoebeHopp
hi Phoebe, thank you so much for the advice!! having a game plan for specific question types is definitely something i'm going to implement into my prep! :) thank you for taking the time to respond!
Do you have any of the blind review suggested settings turned on? I found that when I had them turned on, I was essentially never forcing myself to question whether I actually knew the content or just relying on a crutch.
If you do have all of them turned off and you are going through each question you got right and wrong, then it will likely be an underlying content or strategic gap. These are kinds of questions that are coming up for me:
I see that for S2 and S3, you got the last question wrong. Was this because you ran out of time? Are the questions you got wrong scattered across different question types, or are they aligned with your top priorities? And for your RC section (it's harder to know where the passage breakups are so I'm estimating 😅), your errors are clustered around Passage 2 but you did great on Passage 4! Did you rush through Passage 2, or was it a harder passage type? Did you misinterpret the author's tone, or get confused by an answer that sounds right but is actually not supported at all?
These are the types of questions that I like to ask myself (and ask the 7Sage bot too!) to isolate which problems are content vs. strategic. I found that a lot of the questions I initially labeled as 'strategic' were actually an underlying issue with my content. Either because I wasn't confident in the logical error, or I initially couldn't identify the flaw, or I rushed a contrapositive and diagrammed wrong. Technically I could find the answer with unlimited time, but the fact that I couldn't quickly identify the issue pointed to an issue of a shaky foundation.
What you can try to do, if you don't want to do a whole PT at the moment, is do a few drills of 10 level 4-5 questions of your top priorities (technically you can do this with RC too by taking your top passage type but do it sparingly so that you don't run out of PTs) and take it with the recommended standard time. Then, with all of the BR recommendations turned off, go through each of the 10 questions and see if you can confidently pick the answer you chose again and confidently eliminate the other answer choices. Log any of the questions you get wrong timed/correct BR, wrong timed/wrong BR, wrong timed/no BR, right timed/wrong BR, right timed but over-time, and flagged questions. This data will help you gauge where you may be having more serious issues, and where you may have some easily fixable issues.
For example, if all of your wrong answers are correct on BR, then it might be a timing issue (maybe rushing and misreading a word, overly trusting your prephrase, etc). But things like wrong timed/no BR or right timed/wrong BR can point to a content gap.
I've seen your explanations in the discussion tab of the PT questions, and I think that you definitely have a strong grasp on the foundations! Now it's just about eliminating the small errors that have slipped through the cracks. I'm in a very similar spot as you, so I definitely feel your struggle! Wishing you the best, blueberry!
@haena
hi haena! thank you so much for the in-depth response and the great insight<3 i will definitely start implementing BR into my drills (i have not been doing that :o ) and hopefully see where the underlying problems are :') good luck to you as well, we got this !!
commenting because i'm curious about what methods others are doing (and also noticing a similar issue in myself)
for the blind review, are you going through the whole thing again blind (essentially a retake) or are you just hitting the ones that were marked for blind review? i haven't done too many PTs yet and mostly been doing short drills which are manageable for full retakes but i'm not sure if a retake of the whole thing would be ideal (time and energywise)?
@yesterdayseeker
for BR, I was only reviewing the ones that have been marked as incorrect or skipped! I probably wouldn't recommend a retake of the whole thing, but personally I'm going to start turning off the "incorrect" option in BR and plan on purely spending BR on questions that I flagged or skipped~